Wireless communication devices, such as cellular telephones, pagers, personal data assistants, Palm Pilots™, laptop computers and the like, are quickly becoming ubiquitous. Many of these wireless devices support not only telephone calls, but also e-mail, Internet access, video/audio transmissions, games, etc. This enhanced functionality has also led to the ability to display electronic advertising on these devices. In some instances, the electronic advertising is displayed after a predetermined period of user inactivity has been detected. In such cases, however, the electronic advertising is displayed while consuming battery power, a precious resource in wireless devices.
An electronic book (“eBook”) is another wireless device, which comprises a communications terminal with a fairly large display that permits electronic versions of printed books to be loaded from either local or remote digitized libraries and displayed for user consumption. Some eBooks are equipped with a Cholesteric liquid crystal display (“ChLCD”). A ChLCD is an advanced reflective display technology, which contains a bistable, non-volatile memory feature. Once an image is written to a ChLCD, the image will remain on the display after power is removed, indefinitely, until a new image is generated. Thus, an eBook with a ChLCD will display the last page read by the user indefinitely, even after the power to the display has been removed. Power is only needed to change the image on the display. However, in eBooks equipped with a ChLCD, power is only applied to change the image from the current page of the electronic version of the book being read to the next page, not to display advertising after detecting user inactivity.